


i'll learn to float, then begin again

by who_won_the_race_back_home



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Tony Sawicki/Felix Dawkins, Trans Male Character, but mostly in that they annoy one another and that is how they show affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-06 23:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12828480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/who_won_the_race_back_home/pseuds/who_won_the_race_back_home
Summary: Tony's been running for months now. But he finally gets a message from Felix. It's all over, but they need to talk.Tony gets his dose of the cure, and finally meets Cosima.





	1. Chapter 1

Tony finished pumping gas into the car he had stolen a few days earlier in Halifax. When he found it there were still dead leaves in the windshield from the previous fall. It clearly hadn’t been used in a while. He switched the plates with those of a car a block over. Tony tried his best not to steal without it being a job, well, sometimes, but he figured the car was better off in his hands for the time being. Plus, bus tickets from town to town added up quick, much quicker than cheap gas

Art had tried shipping him back to Ohio, but he didn’t even have his ID with him, let alone a passport or visa, so he hopped off the bus at the last stop before the border and began bumming around Canada, picking up odd jobs and living out of different stolen cars for a week at a time. Parts of it reminded him of his early days with Sammy, casing garages for cars that would sell high to people who didn’t ask a whole lot of questions.

Before pulling out of the gas station, he dug under the bottom of the passenger seat for the crappy old burner Felix had given him. By now, he really only checked it out of habit, every couple weeks or so, because with most things in his life, he learned to have no expectations for a sign of hope. He turned it on, and there was a blinking notification of one new voicemail, recorded four days ago.

“Tony, it’s Felix. I’m so sorry we kept you out of the loop for so long, but I hope you get this. It’s over. Dyad, Neolution, monitors, all of it, it’s done. You’re safe. From that, anyways. God knows what kind of trouble you’ve managed to get yourself into recently. But, we need to talk, so call me back.”

Tony saved the message and stared at the phone. The running and hiding was over. He should have known. It had been weeks since he felt like he was being followed, even longer since he had actually seen someone try to tail him. Maybe he could finally try to get Sammy’s stuff from his old landlord. And stop living out of stolen cars. Maybe build his contact list back up and start making actual money again. Hell, maybe he could even get back into the states. Maybe he could start by buying a 30 rack of Molson and seeing where that took him.

A car blared its horn behind him. He had been sitting at the gas pump for a solid five minutes. Pitching the phone into the passenger’s seat, he pulled out of the station and started heading west.

He had never been much for phone calls.

* * *

It took two days to get back to Toronto. If he had put his mind to it, he could have made it in one, but it had already been nearly a week since Felix had left his message. Tony kept the phone on, and there hadn’t been another call. It clearly wasn’t anything urgent.

He ditched the car a few blocks from Felix’s loft. Even though Felix has said everything was over, Tony never thought you could be too careful when it came to covering your tracks. It was nearly midnight, and all the windows of the warehouse were dark. Fortunately, Felix was dumb enough to lock his place up with a padlock. Tony made quick work of it, picking locks was one of his favorite nefarious activities, sliding the door open to a dark and quiet apartment.

Tony pulled out his phone and called Felix, but he heard it ringing just a few feet away on the coffee table. Grabbing a half empty bottle of cheap wine from what served as the kitchen table, Tony dropped his bag and flopped onto the couch. Without a TV to occupy himself with, he sipped from the bottle and played game after game of snake on his phone until he passed out.

* * *

“Jesus fucking christ Tony!”

Tony woke slowly, trying to blink past his grogginess. He was still drunk and it was still dark out, he hadn’t been asleep for very long.

“Tony, what the hell are you doing here?” Felix shouted, slightly less startled, but just as loud.

“Dude, you don’t need to fuckin’ yell,” Tony replied. “You said we needed to talk. I don’t have anything better to do right now, so I’m here.”

Felix slid the door shut and rubbed his temples, then noticed the bottle of wine cradled next to Tony.

“Oi! You break into my loft, pass out on my couch, and steal my booze?” he said, snatching the bottle and drinking the remnants. “I ought to beat you with this bottle.”

Tony sat up slowly and smirked at Felix, “Aw, c’mon babe, I thought you’d be happy to see me. Remember, you’re the one that called me.”

“You’ve been awake for thirty seconds and I already want to kill you. That’s impressive.”

He moved to sit and shoved Tony to make room for himself. Tony laughed and obliged, scooting over.

“Don’t get comfy, you can go get the other bottle of wine for me,” Felix said, swatting at Tony’s arm

“Yessir,” Tony replied with a halfhearted salute. He grabbed the bottle and the corkscrew, ripping the foil off with his teeth on his way back to the couch.

“Ever the gentleman,” Felix said as he took the bottle from Tony. He took a large swig and set it down on the coffee table. “Now, why couldn’t you have just called me instead of breaking and entering?”

Tony shrugged. “I dunno, figured it woulda ended up in me coming back here anyways. Just cut out a step. Anyways, I hate the phone.”

“Well, a friendly heads up that you’d be asleep on my couch while I was out would have been appreciated.”

“Then I’m sorry,” Tony said, almost genuinely apologetic.

“I know that’s the best I’m going to get out of you, so thank you.”

Tony chuckled and moved to grab the wine, but Felix smacked his hand and tucked the bottle against his side.

“You already got one. I have to catch up,” Felix said.

* * *

Felix’s bottle turned into one more shared between the two of them, which turned into Tony’s hand on Felix’s thigh, which turned into Tony pressing Felix back into the couch, grinding into him, his mouth rough against Felix’s throat.

Felix pulled at Tony’s hips and got him into a drunken, slightly sloppy kiss, the wine making it easier to push his reservations about wanting to get fucked by his sister’s clone into the back corner of his mind. But also Tony was good with his mouth, and that itself was more than enough of a distraction from the moral dilemma.

But then another popped in: the disease, Cosima’s cure, all the shit with Dyad and neolution. There was a reason Tony was here and moving his hands down to undo the button of Felix’s jeans.

“Tony, wait. Shit,” he said, taking Tony’s hand off his zipper. “As much as I love fucking around, literally and figuratively, when there’s important things to be done, we should actually, you know, talk.”

Tony dropped his head and pushed himself back to the other end of the couch. “Fuck dude, you are no fuckin fun,” he said with a bit of an incredulous laugh, patting his pockets to find his cigarettes.

“There are several gentlemen in the Toronto area who would beg to differ. They pay handsomely for how fun I am,” Felix said.

“Huh,” Tony said, lighting his cigarette and offering it to Felix. “Well, I’d like to know what the fuss is all about.”

Felix ignored him. Tony lit another cigarette and took a long drag, his eyes wandering to the empty wine bottle they abandoned on the floor.

“If we have to talk, you got anymore booze around?” Tony asked, searching the apartment for anything.

“Christ, good to know you like my sparkling wit as much as my cock,” Felix said as he rolled his eyes. “There’s beer in the fridge.”

“Has nothin’ to do with you or your, uh, way with words,” Tony said as he ambled over to the kitchen. “More like, I assume there is a catch to Dyad being done, and I want to be drunker for it.”

He twisted the top off of one of the beers and downed half of it in one long gulp. “Now, what the hell do we have to talk about?”

“Come sit,” Felix said, patting the couch cushion.

Tony gave him a sideways glance. “I really don’t like when you talk like that. Am I fuckin’ dying or something? What?” he said at Felix’s annoyed face.

“No, you’re not dying. I’m just trying to have a conversation with you like we’re both adults. Which you make incredibly difficult to do.”

“Fuck you too, dude,” Tony said, sitting back down on the sofa, propping his feet on the coffee table.

“So. All the DYAD clones have a high likelihood of developing a disease,” Felix said.

Tony tensed and the shit eating grin grin disappeared from his face. “What kind of disease?”

“It causes polyps to grow in your,” Felix paused, “I’m sorry, uterus, and it weakens your immune sys-”

“Oh fuck me, man,” Tony said, cutting Felix off. “There is not enough booze on this whole fuckin’ block for me to get drunk enough to hear anything about that stuff.”

He knocked back the rest of his beer and rushed to the kitchen for another one.

“Do you not have anything harder in here? Fuck!” he said, slamming the door to the fridge.

“Tony, calm down. Would you let me finish?” Felix asked. Tony stopped his pacing around the kitchen.

“What I’m trying to get at is there’s a cure. Cosima,” Felix said, pointing to his painting of her, “dreadlocks, remember? She and her girlfriend developed a cure. You’ll be fine. And hopefully never have to think about this ever again.”

Tony looked at the painting and rubbed at his temples for a moment to calm himself.

“Well shit, when can I meet the good goddamn doctors then?”


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, after a fitful drunken sleep on the couch and breakfast consisting of two more beers and a handful of cashews from a bag in Felix’s kitchen (“Protein,” Tony said, after a sideways look from Felix), Tony found himself in the cab of an old beat up truck, Felix driving them to Cosima and Delphine’s apartment across town.

“Gotta say Fee Fee, I did not picture you driving a beater like this,” Tony said.

Felix smacked him in the head hard, enough to get Tony to yell.

“Ow! Fuck you.”

“Well, I told you not to call me that. You brought that on yourself Anthony,” Felix replied.

“Fuck, dude. I’m all about playing rough, but you have to give me a bit of warning,” Tony said, holding a hand to the back of his head.

Felix shrugged noncommittally, but didn’t respond. They sat in silence for the next fifteen minutes of traffic, listening to a pop station. A Katy Perry song came on over the speakers, and Felix immediately turned it off.

“The truck was my mother’s. Foster mother’s," Felix said. "She–at the end of everything, with all this, she was killed. Sarah didn’t want it, so she let me take it.” 

“Shit. Felix, I’m sorry,” Tony said.

“Thanks. It’s–it’s not fine, but I’m fine. Right now anyways,” Felix said, giving Tony a small smile. “She would’ve loved to give this garbage heap to someone like you.”

“A car I didn’t have to steal, sounds like a great fucking deal to me. I mean, looks and sounds like it’s got some good bones to it,” Tony said, tapping at the dashboard. “Probably could get it running something near new again if I had the time. Or the money.”

“S would’ve loved you. Would’ve smacked you upside the head enough to give you brain damage, probably, but she would’ve loved you. Always liked her kids scrappy,” Felix said,

Tony chuckled and lightheartedly shoved at Felix’s arm.

“Stop bein’ a fucking sap, dude. It’s a huge turn off.”

“Oh no, wouldn’t want to deter you, would I?” Felix said, raising an eyebrow at Tony.

“Eyes on the road, Fee,” Tony said, reaching out and squeezing high on Felix’s thigh before being quickly batted away.

“Jesus christ, can’t take you anywhere,” Felix said.

“Probably shouldn’t, no,” Tony replied. 

“And yet...” Felix said, mostly to himself.

Felix turned off onto a side street and pulled into a spot in front of a three story brick apartment building. They got out of the truck, and Tony immediately began looking around instinctively for eyes that might be on them, a habit he had picked up from years of working with Sammy that had been thrown into overdrive during the past few months. Felix rested a hand between his shoulder blades to get his attention and to try and calm him.

“This is it,” Felix said. “Now, let’s get inside before I kill you here on the sidewalk.”

“You really know how to make a boy feel special, you know that?” Tony said, laughing and dodging another open hand from Felix aimed at his arm.

On the way up the stairs Tony pulled his hair into a bun, and Felix quirked up his mouth in appreciation, which Tony did not see.

“What, you think you’re going to have to win some sort of bar brawl before they’ll give the shot to you?” he said.

Tony shrugged. “I dunno, just felt like it.”

“Well, it’s certainly an improvement,” Felix said.

Tony didn’t have time to respond before the door opened after Felix’s knocking. A tall, blonde woman stood in the doorway. 

“Tony, hello. It’s nice to meet you,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Delphine.” 

“You too,” he replied, shaking her hand.

“Felix,” Delphine said.

“Delphine,” Felix replied coolly, moving in to kiss her on the cheek.

“This some European feud shit or what?” Tony said, eyes shifting between the two of them.

“Ignore them, they just like being dramatic at each other,” called a voice from further in the apartment. 

Tony walked past Delphine and Felix passively aggressively greeting one other and towards where he heard the voice come from. He worked his way back to the kitchen and found a smallwoman with dreadlocks making tea. She turned and she had his face, giving him a warm smile and a friendly wave.

“Hey, Tony? I’m Cosima.”

Tony held out his hand to shake, but she pulled him into a hug instead. Tony’s body went stiff and Cosima immediately let him go.

“Shit, sorry. Should’ve asked,” she said.

“No, no, it’s cool. Just wasn’t expecting it,” Tony said, waving his hand in dismissal. 

“It’s just exciting to meet you, dude. Felix told us all about you.”

Tony ticked his eyebrows up in amusement.

“Really? Felix told you all about me,” he said loudly over his shoulder into the living room.

Felix scoffed from the living room and walked into the kitchen, arms crossed.

“Please, don’t flatter yourself,” he said.

“Don’t need to when you do it for me, babe,” Tony said, reaching out to pinch Felix on the arm. Felix swatted his hand away and went back to the living room. Tony and Cosima both let out the same laugh, and Tony cut himself off short.

“God, this shit is still so fucking weird,” Tony said.

“It doesn’t ever really stop being weird,” Cosima said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

She turned back to her tea, and motioned at Tony, asking if he wanted any. Tony declined and meandered over to the doorway. He leaned against the frame and watched Felix and Delphine chat on the couch, Felix recounting stories from his last trip to New York. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned back to Cosima.

“So, Felix told me we can get some kinda disease?”

“Yeah. It’s nasty. Almost killed me a couple of times,” Cosima said with a laugh. “More than a couple of times. But Delphine and I were able to synthesize a vaccine to prevent the rest of you from contracting it.”

Cosima motioned for Tony to follow her. She led him past Felix and Delphine to the second bedroom, which had been converted into an office and pseudo laboratory. She sat down at the desk and opened an x-ray image and a page of numbers and figures Tony couldn’t even begin to comprehend on the computer.

“Okay, so like, it's pretty much it follicular lymphoma. Y’know, cancer. Because we were all IVF babies, our surrogates were given extra hormones, hormones they didn’t need, but because it’s just part of the process we all ended up with too much estrogen in our systems. And so for all of us, this means that we make too many uterine follicles and we have overactive–” 

“Listen, doc, I don’t want to be rude,” Tony said cutting her off.

“You literally are always rude,” Felix called from the living room.

Tony ignored him. “I just–I’m glad you got all this shit figured out. But I don’t wanna hear about it. I’ve made my peace with most of what’s going on in here,” he said, motioning towards himself. “But that don’t mean I wanna know how it works.”

“Oh shit. Oh my god, yeah, I’m so sorry. Of course,” Cosima said, closing the window on her monitor and turning towards him. “I just get really excited, and with you being trans and on hormones my brain is just like firing a million miles a second.”

She got up from her chair and led Tony to a table on the other side of the room set up with basic medical supplies.

“It’s like, I’m trying to figure out how we, all of us, work when we’re not acting the way we were designed. We’re all different, but you’re the only one so far that’s, like, so physiologically different, if you get what I’m saying. So, like, has testosterone slowed this thing down at all, or even prevented it? It’s fascinating,” she said.

“I’m not gonna be some guinea pig for you man,” Tony said sharply, crossing his arms and backing towards the door.

“Nononono, oh my god! That’s not what I meant. Sorry. I’ve spent a lot of time cooped up in labs with white boy nerds who don’t have any social skills. It’s probably rubbed off a bit,” Cosima said. “I mean I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to give me a blood sample, though”

Tony gave her a skeptical look.

“Kidding!” she said. 

Cosima moved around the table and settled in front of Tony. Even without his boots on he probably would’ve been almost an inch taller than her. She grabbed Tony by the arms lightly to make him look at her.

“I didn’t want to meet you just to, y’know, study you. You’re family, dude. And we’re trying to keep the whole clone thing under wraps, so I don’t really get to meet any of us. But you know, so I can actually talk to you. And, like, be friends. Or friendly, or whatever. If you want,” she said. 

She let him go and went back to the table, pulling on a pair of latex gloves, and setting up a syringe that she filled from a small vial.

“And if not. I get it. This shit is wild. And if you just wanna go back to whatever, I don’t blame you,” she said, capping the syringe and setting it back on the tray. “Okay, that’s it. One shot in the arm and you’re good to go.”

“That’s it?” Tony said.

“Yeah, sorry it isn’t more dramatic. I’m a student, gotta keep production costs low,” Cosima said.

Tony chuckled and took off his flannel, strewing it across a chair. He rolled up the sleeve of his t-shirt, and Cosima ran an alcohol swab up by his shoulder. She stuck him with the needle and he cringed a little, not used to be stabbed there.

“I don’t really have anywhere to go back to,” he said, after a moment. “I don’t know if Felix told you, but the suits–Dyad, whatever – they killed my partner. My business partner, I mean. But he was my best friend, y’know?” 

Cosima finished depressing the plunger and gave him a piece of gauze to stop the small spot of blood forming. She was quiet, throwing away her gloves and disposing the syringe, letting him talk.

“But then I got the call to come here, and I was in the US illegally. I don’t have a passport, a visa, nothin.’ I could probably get back in, but all our jobs came through his contacts, and none of them have wanted to touch me since he got shot,” he said, grabbing his shirt from the chair. “Can’t say I blame them. I probably wouldn’t return my calls either.”

He pulled the shirt back on and did up the buttons, catching Felix in the doorway out of the corner of his eye.

“I’ve been running all over the country for the past four months, and now that this shit is all over, I dunno. I dunno what I’m gonna do,” he said. “Sorry about gettin’ pissy at you.”

“No, dude. It’s fine. I get it,” Cosima said, waving her hands in dismissal. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

Tony nodded his head, “Thanks.”

“I know I will regret this, but you can stay with me. I’m going to be out of town more anyways. Need someone to make sure the place doesn’t get broken into,” Felix said from behind Tony.

“No, wouldn’t want that, would you?” Tony replied with a grin.

“Like I said, I already regret it,” Felix said.

Tony scratched at the scruff on his chin, thinking.

“Okay doc, how about this? You–”

“Actually, I’m still a PhD student. Not a doctor, not yet anyways,” Cosima said. “Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m still technically in school.”

“Eh, close enough for me,” Tony said, shrugging. “But what I was gonna say was, you can have some of my blood to run whatever tests you wanna, but I need you to check some stuff for me, like my levels, red blood cell count, a couple other things. I haven’t been able to go to an endo for a long time, and I haven’t died yet, but it couldn’t hurt if you can do it for me. I don’t have an insurance card or anything and I can’t get a new one without an ID, so I’m shit outta luck otherwise.”

Cosima lit up, but tried to contain herself.

“Yeah! Yeah, I can do that. I’ll probably have to call in a favor to get some equipment, but yeah, we can run labs for you,” she said. “Can I–dude, can I hug you?”

“Sure,” Tony said.

Cosima wrapped him in her arms and squeezed him tight. Felix tried keeping a straight face as Tony awkwardly tried to hug her back, clearly a little uncomfortable. She let him go after a few long moments.

“Seriously Tony, thank you,” she said. “Like, we’re human fucking clones dude. That’s a big deal. And I’m just trying to figure us all out. All two hundred and seventy-four.”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Tony said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That many?”

“Yeah, it’s kind of a nightmare,” Cosima said. “Like in a big picture sense anyways.”

She laughed and took a joint from the cigarette case tucked in the pocket of her sweater. 

“You wanna go smoke?” Cosima asked.

“Shit, you fuckin’ bet.” Tony said. “Y’know, I knew I would like you, doc.”

Cosima laughed and lit the joint, taking a hit and leading Tony towards the apartment balcony.

“Also, dude, your girlfriend is fucking hot,” he said.

Cosima laughed again. “Yeah, I know.”

They stepped out into the chilly early Toronto spring and shared the joint, cracking jokes and laughing like old friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to tumblr user i-type-a-lot for summarizing the science on what the clone diesease is!
> 
> Please come yell with me about how this show did Tony wrong over at angrypedestrian.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> Listen we all have days where we're like, shit, I dunno what to title this, lets just use Jawbreaker lyrics.
> 
> Not sure this needed to be in two chapters, but since I haven't written the second one yet, I figure posting the first will give me motivation to do it. Right? That's how this works?


End file.
